Former raceway becomes preserve

Defunct Carlsbad raceway, site of Evel Knievel stunts, now home to endangered animals

CARLSBAD  Carlsbad has created a new nature preserve on land where Evel Knievel once performed daring stunts in front of large crowds and ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” broadcast frenzied motorcycle races.

The 46-acre Carlsbad Raceway Open Space Preserve sits on the northern portion of the former Carlsbad Raceway, an old-fashioned drag strip where screaming fans watched off-road cars and motorcycles face off from 1964 to 2004.

California was peppered with similar racetracks from the 1950s through the 1980s, when they began closing because of waning popularity and greater demand for semi-rural land to make way for housing and industrial projects.

Developers of the Carlsbad Raceway Business Park, which covers about 100 acres of the former raceway site, agreed several years ago to create a nature preserve on the remaining land to mitigate the habitat destroyed by their project.

After five years of restoration and some enhancements, the preserve has been turned over to nonprofit San Diego Habitat Conservancy for monitoring and upkeep, city officials said this week.

Members of the public — including hikers and bird watchers — are prohibited from entering the site, which is just north of Palomar Airport Road and west of Business Park Drive near Carlsbad’s border with Vista and San Marcos.

The area serves as crucial habitat for several threatened species, such as the California gnatcatcher, Cooper’s hawk, yellow-breasted chat, orange-throated whiptail, coast horned lizard and loggerhead shrike, conservancy officials said.

“The best way to protect these species is to preserve their habitat,” said Don Scoles, executive director of the conservancy.

The area is also part of a wider wildlife corridor that stretches farther south into Carlsbad and north into Vista, allowing threatened species to move around instead of being confined to an isolated preserve.

“It has value in itself, but it’s important that it connects to larger areas,” Scoles said. “It’s a key piece of the puzzle.”

Carlsbad is one of only three cities in San Diego County that strategically preserves habitat according to a wider plan, known as a habitat management plan. The other cities are San Diego and Chula Vista.

“Connecting all the pieces that you are conserving makes sense,” said senior city planner Mike Grim. “It’s one more piece of our citywide system.”

When plans to close the raceway were announced a decade ago, some community members fought to keep it open as a recreation venue.

A leader of that group was Bruce Santourian, who said this week that he still regrets that the city rejected the idea.

“It could have been sensational,” he said, adding that possible activities included archery, a skatepark and off-road vehicle events. “We had a really good vision.”

The closure of the raceway in fall 2004 came just before operations ceased at the Cajon Speedway, a similar venue in El Cajon. The only remaining track in the county is the Barona Speedway between Ramona and Lakeside.